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impossible for him to get to Manly before noon, and he claimed the right to lodge his nomination in the city with the Chief Returning Officer.
This procedure was clearly against the rules laid down in the Electoral Act. To be valid, the nomination paper and the deposit had to be delivered to the office in Manly before the deadline. Darby was told bluntly that he was out of order, but he persisted.
This fruitless argument continued as the minutes ticked away, with the language becoming more and more heated; until the clock on the wall showed twelve o'clock. Then, With sweat running down his face and his hands trembling, the local Returning Officer put down the phone and announced that nominations had closed.
I turned to see the reaction of the ABC crew. Surely they would be delighted to have captured this unexpected drama. To my astonishment, I found that they had not been filming the argument which had raged on the telephone.
Instead, they had directed their attention to a strange man and woman who were standing on the other side of the room. This couple had flown from Melbourne that morning. A few minutes before noon, they had arrived at the Manly office and lodged a surprise nomination for someone called Patricia Langworthy, a Pro-Life candidate.
At the very last moment, an indepdendent who might